our notes crossed. Yes, I’ve found some of ASR’s measurements helpful, but unless I’m missing something, I don’t think they typically measure/evaluate streamers. Part of the reason I suspect is that Amir thinks streamers are basically irrelevant, and that it’s a waste of time and money to spend more than what a Raspberry Pi costs unless you want something a little prettier. I disagree with this view, but I get it. Amir believes that a well-engineered dac is not susceptible to incoming jitter, and that good engineering also requires excellent noise filtering (a la the iFi dac). Again, I get it, but I think that’s too reductive. I think people should be allowed and encouraged to buy whatever they like, including non-oversampling dacs that measure poorly and are susceptible to incoming jitter.
My one non-negotiable though is that we should all have as much info as possible to help inform our decisions, and I really abhor the mystical approach where people claim everything matters. Everything doesn’t matter, in certain circumstances, due to the diversity of our systems. As we’ve seen, som sacs need low-jitter streamers, some don’t.
And I like that you’re trying to figure out why you’re hearing a difference between apps that, in theory, should sound the same if they’re just providing identical bit perfect streams on the same piece of hardware. There has to be an engineering explanation for that, and I hope you provide any additional info you can glean about it. Have you thought about asking Volumio directly?